Strange Snacks of the World: Japanese Green Tea Kit Kat Bar

A friend was passing through Tokyo's Narita Airport recently. Feeling a little peckish and having barely enough time to catch her plane, she sidled over to a candy kiosk.

Spying a familiar wrapper, she plunked down her yen for a Kit Kat Bar, one of her favorites back in the States. Extracting the candy from the wrapper, she discovered that the pair of conjoined bars were covered with green "chocolate," which turned out to be green tea flavored, with the same substance layered inside between the wafers.

She found that, by the second bar, that she had become somewhat smitten with the confection, which contains real green tea in a matrix that might be compared to so-called "white chocolate," which has no actual chocolate at all--instead it has a coating made with coconut fat.

Kit Kats are wildly popular in Japan, in part because the name is similar to a Japanese phrase that means, "you will win," and thus Kit Kats are given away on auspicious occasions. The flavors of the outer "chocolate" have changed over the last few years, including, in addition to green tea, yuzu, vanilla, melon, and maple syrup.

Kit Kat was first manufactured in England in 1935. It is now manufactured worldwide by Nestle.